An attorney and leader in a campaign to protect access to public information was handcuffed and escorted out of the Arkansas Bar Association‘s annual convention in Hot Springs Friday in a bizarre spectacle that unfolded in a room full of lawyers and judges.
Hot Springs police officers cuffed Jennifer Standerfer and told her she had to leave the Hot Springs Convention Center or face arrest because she was carrying with her petitions for a pair of ballot measures she’s trying to get on the November ballot. The two proposals are intended to work in tandem to protect the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, the state law guaranteeing Arkansans the right to access government documents. They’re being pushed by a coalition of left, right and center that formed to shield the FOIA last fall after Gov. Sarah Sanders and her allies in the Legislature plotted to weaken the law.
Police and convention center officials said Standerfer violated a rule against soliciting; Standerfer said she simply had the petitions with her in case anyone wanted to sign, but was not asking for signatures. It’s standard for judicial candidates to wear campaign buttons and T-shirts and hand out push cards at these conventions, she said. No problem there. Carrying petitions, though, got her handcuffed in front of her colleagues.
“This is the only time I’ve ever been arrested. I don’t plan to do it again,” Standerfer said Friday afternoon.
While officers stopped short of charging her with criminal trespassing, Standerfer and others are left with questions about who called in the police, and why.
“It was insanely weird. I’m shocked,” said attorney and state Rep. Ashley Hudson (D-Little Rock), who was at the convention, too.
The first sign of trouble
Standerfer said that while she kept petitions with her throughout her time at the convention, she did not ask people to sign them. She wanted to have them handy, though, since convention attendees came from across the state.
Standerfer was wheeling petitions around with her in a black canvas wagon Thursday afternoon when she was first approached by law enforcement. Around 3 p.m., Sgt. Patrick Langley from the Hot Springs Police Department told her to leave the convention center because her petitions were not allowed, Standerfer said.
She told Langley that this was a First Amendment issue that could be easily explained, and asked who she needed to talk with to get things cleared up. Langley gave her the names of three people he said had asked police to have Standerfer removed. They were Hot Springs Convention Center employees Jennifer Wolcott and Pauline Howard, and Kristin Frye, director of operations for the Arkansas Bar Association.
On Friday morning, Standerfer said she got a voicemail from Wolcott, director of operations for the Hot Springs Convention Center, letting her know the wagon and petitions would not be allowed back in the building. The message seemed to Standerfer like a double standard.
“The convention center has never prohibited political speech at the bar meetings,” she said. Even this week, she said judicial candidates were passing out stickers and other campaign materials. “That happens all the time,” she said.
Standerfer came to participate in a Friday morning session without the wagon, but with four clipboards of petitions in hand in case anyone wanted to sign. She set them down on a table but said she didn’t talk about them or draw attention to them.
Then, the cops arrived.
Hudson was not in the room where the conference session was taking place but saw officers gathering outside the door. “I watched three police officers show up. Three fully armed police officers standing outside the door,” Hudson said. Hudson texted Standerfer to let her know police were outside.
An officer came in the room and waited until someone signed one of the petitions on the table.
“Once someone signed my petition, that was soliciting and I was in violation of their policy. He said I was being arrested and put me in cuffs,” Standerfer said.
Once they’d gotten out to the lobby, confusion set in, Standerfer said. Sgt. Langley wasn’t among the original team of police officers who came to confront her Friday morning, but he arrived as they walked Standerfer out of the building. Langley reiterated that people from both the convention center and the Arkansas Bar Association had complained, Standerfer said.
“They originally told me I was being arrested for criminal trespass,” she said. But the Hot Springs Convention Center is seemingly a public building, owned by the city of Hot Springs, and Standerfer had paid to be there for the conference.
After some discussion, the officers decided to let Standerfer go, as long as she agreed to leave the property and take her petitions with her. They told her she could not stand on the sidewalk out front with her petitions, but would have to cross to the other side of the street.
A Freedom of Information Act request to the Hot Springs Police Department for information about the incident was not immediately fulfilled Friday afternoon; by law, the department has three business days to respond. A message left with their media relations officer Friday afternoon was not immediately returned.
This isn’t the first time in recent weeks that canvassers for a ballot measure drew unexpected resistance from local police. People collecting signatures for a proposal that would restore abortion access in Arkansas were threatened with arrest on public property at an event held by a state agency on May 30 in Little Rock. According to at least one officer with the Little Rock Police Department on the scene, the order to prevent signature-gathering came from the governor herself.
Varying accounts
On Friday evening, there were still plenty of questions about who called the cops on citizen Standerfer, and why.
“When I talk to the Bar, they say, ‘No, we don’t have a position [regarding petitions at the convention],’” Standerfer said. “OK, but the cops keep going around saying you called them.”
A statement sent out by the Arkansas Bar Association shortly before 6 p.m. Friday leaves some of that mystery intact:
“We are aware of an incident that occurred during our Annual Meeting at the Hot Springs Convention Center (HSCC) in which an attendee was removed from the premises. No one who was authorized to speak on behalf of the Arkansas Bar Association requested the HSCC to remove the attendee. The HSCC has a policy against soliciting including petitioning. The Association’s leadership team and the Association’s executive director advised the attendee of the existence of the HSCC’s policy. The Association provided the attendee with contact information for the HSCC staff. The attendee had a meeting with a representative of the HSCC prior to her removal from the premises.”
Arkansas Citizens for Transparency, the group Standerfer is working with to enshrine the Freedom of Information Act into the state constitution, also put out a statement Friday.
“Today one of our ballot question committee members Jennifer Waymack Standerfer was arrested for trespassing while attending an Arkansas Bar Association meeting in Hot Springs on public property. Political speech occurs regularly at this meeting and location. Although Standerfer had registered for and paid to attend this event, she was asked to leave and arrested for carrying the Arkansas Government Disclosure Act and Amendment petitions.
After the arrest, she was barred from the event and denied the right to collect signatures outside of the event on the sidewalk.
While Arkansas Citizens for Transparency strongly supports the rule of law, this protection must also extend to Standerfer’s constitutional right to advocate for the First Amendment.
ACT will continue to fight for Arkansans’ right to know.”
Arkansas Citizens for Transparency attorney John Tull still had plenty of questions about the incident. Why doesn’t the Hot Springs Convention Center post their rule against soliciting on their website? And does just carrying something around with you constitute solicitation?
“It is a public forum she had a right to be at. She was registered as an attendee. I don’t see how carrying a petition – any more than wearing a T-shirt, any more than wearing a button supporting a particular judicial candidate – is different,” he said. “Carrying a petition is disallowed, but that’s allowed?”
Then there’s the question of whether political speech falls under the solicitation umbrella.
“Petitioning qualifies as speech, and speech is protected. There was no solicitation. And even if there was solicitation, there isn’t a posted policy.”
Sending multiple officers to the scene seemed excessive, Tull said. “I am very concerned by the reaction of the Bar Association, as well as the Hot Springs Police Department.”